Blogs I Occasional

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Sunday’s stage of the Tour de France looks likely to end in a blistering mountaintop duel among the best of the best. Have a look, at http://www.versus.com/tourdefrancelive . Webcast starts at 7:40 a.m. EDT. Today’s stage raised the odds that some riders Sunday will be out to settle scores. Here’s some back story:

George Hincapie and Lance Armstrong rode on the same team together for years as Lance racked up 7 Tour de France victories in a row. Here and there George got a stage win or some other plum; outside the Tour he won national championships and other prizes, but riding in Lance’s shadow he seldom had a chance to shine at the Tour.

George now rides on U.S.-based Team Columbia-HTC. Lance now rides on Team Astana, sponsored by a consortium of businesses from Kazakhstan. Astana is angling for the overall victory at the end of the Tour next weekend, hoping either Lance himself or Alberto Contador will ride into the No. 1 slot. Columbia isn’t likely to place high in the general classification, but they have been pulling for stage victories. With one of the hottest sprinters on the Tour in Mark Cavendish, they’ve been cleaning up.

Since Astana’s and Columbia’s interests aren’t in direct opposition, both teams have been doing each other favors in this year’s Tour. Columbia knows that they can let Astana lead the peloton for most of a stage, and Astana’s riders are likely to get out of the way at the end of the day and not steal Cav’s thunder. Astana’s not after the stage wins. Likewise, Astana knows that on a tough mountain day they can let Columbia ride in front and protect Astana’s riders from having to work hard against the wind, saving their energy for the day’s critical climbs, when Astana will earn their way into the overall lead. Columbia isn’t trying to win the overall, so they don’t mind falling behind at the end of a mountain climb.

This is not a formal entente, but it’s an obvious advantage to both teams. The teams trained together on the Tour’s first rest day. Lance and George are old friends. They know each other’s minds. Nobody on the Tour is blind to this.

Columbia-Astana becomes, informally, a superteam that’s hard for everyone else to beat. (They also have some of the world’s best cyclists on board.)

So far, Astana has been riding right where they want to be: near the front, but not in the high-pressure first position. Traditionally, the mountains bring an opportunity for the general-classification riders to push uphill ahead of the lesser riders. Somewhere in here, everyone knows that Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck need to attack Astana and try to ride out in front of them. (So will Carlos Sastre, last year’s winner, if he thinks he’s able.) Astana needs to attack the current leader, Rinaldo Nocentini, and put either Lance or Alberto—or probably both of them—ahead in the GC.

And then there’s Garmin-Slipstream. Garmin is also a U.S.-based team. Their man Bradley Wiggins is riding just behind Lance and Alberto in the general standings. Their Christian Vande Velde is not far behind. So far, their sprinter Tyler Farrar has been pretty frustrated as he’s watched Columbia’s Mark Cavendish beat him to the finish line by fractions of a second four times already.

Well, today Garmin slapped George Hincapie in the face.

For all the years he’s raced the Tour, George Hincapie has never worn the yellow jersey, which belongs to the rider who’s at the top of the overall GC standings so far. Today George, who was more than six minutes behind the leader, rode way out in front of the peloton. Since he was seven or eight minutes in front of Nocentini, for a lot of today George was riding in “virtual yellow,” which is to say that if the race ended right there, he had a better time than anyone else.

Lance Armstrong had no reason to keep George Hincapie out of the yellow jersey. He knows his old friend isn’t going to be the first one over the Alps, and would give up the yellow gracefully to Lance or Alberto when the time came. For personal reasons I’m sure Lance would have been very happy to see his old friend ride into the lead, even if it was for only one day.

And Rinaldo Nocentini’s team, even though their man is in yellow right now, didn’t seem to object. They expect Nocentini to lose the yellow jersey before long; they were content to let George take it from him.

So the peloton wasn’t working terribly hard to catch up to George and the dozen other riders who were with him way out in front of the main pack. A lot of riders in the peloton were probably saving their strength for tomorrow’s stage, which will require every ounce of energy a rider can bring.

Then Garmin-Slipstream put the hammer down.

Who knows what was going through their heads? Maybe they wanted to take some revenge for the stages Tyler Farrar has lost to Columbia. Maybe they didn’t want to let Lance do any favors (or appear to) for George, so George wouldn’t feel obliged to help his old friend through tomorrow’s mountains. Maybe they wanted to keep the other top contenders from saving too much strength before tomorrow’s big test. Whatever it was, they started leading the peloton ahead faster and faster, until Big George was no longer the race leader.

Now remember, the Tour is a race. It’s unusual for anyone in a race to have to apologize for going faster. But at the end of the stage, with tongues clucking at how Big George’s apparent yellow jersey had been snatched from his shoulders, Lance Armstrong Tweeted indignantly to the world that he had deliberately not been working his hardest on this stage, so George could get the yellow—a curious brag to be making—and Astana’s manager Johan Bruyneel called Garmin’s tactics “BS.”

Later on Bruyneel dialed that back to “it’s not really sportive,” which is closer to the truth. Like any sport, the Tour offers opportunities to give a nod to a deserving player without sacrificing any advantage, and George Hincapie has certainly earned his way to recognition over a decade and a half of bike racing.

But the yellow jersey is not Lance Armstrong’s or Johan Bruyneel’s to deal out as an award to their friends; it is a prize to be earned. George rode his heart out today, and if that counts as winning, he won. But no team was under any obligation to ride more slowly to let him take yellow for a day. Maybe the classy move would have been to let him have it. And class, and style, and tradition, count more in the Tour de France than they do in some competitions.

(Incidentally, real money changes hands for teams and individuals when someone wins a stage victory or makes it over a mountain pass first or finishes the day with the yellow jersey. These are professional athletes. For Nocentini and his team to “let” someone take the yellow is not a hollow gesture; it’s a financial prize too. In some races, the victory also brings a “time bonus,” which means extra seconds are shaved off your finishing time; this year’s Tour is not offering time bonuses.)

I suspect Garmin’s “strategy” was just that if Lance wanted George to take yellow, for whatever reason, and if Garmin wanted their guy to beat Lance, they should combat Lance’s strategy. Fair enough in a short-term sense: The friend of my enemy is my enemy, and Lance’s own words were “The scenario of George in yellow was perfect for our team.” I’m sure there was also a trace of payback for Columbia’s domination of the sprint finishes. Garmin took no immediate satisfaction from riding harder today; none of their team finished in a better position today than they would have if Garmin had eased back.

But in the larger strategy, it will be interesting to see whether Garmin’s move today comes back to haunt them for the rest of the Tour. They do have two contenders in the top 10 riders overall, and they had a chance to compete in the Alps on an even footing with every other team. But now some other teams will think a little less of Garmin for their “not really sportive” move, and there may be less sportive assistance offered to their riders in the mountains.

More important—and Garmin knew exactly what they were doing—they have now ticked off both Team Columbia and Team Astana, and Lance Armstrong is famous for using anger intelligently to turn himself into an animal on the race course. Lance’s and George’s combined teams have plenty of firepower to surge out ahead of Garmin’s guys if they choose to, and now there’s all the more reason for Columbia to help Astana deal out a drubbing to Garmin.

This comes at a key time, since Astana just lost one of their major riders, Levi Leipheimer, to a broken wrist.

Any stage in the Alps can break a lead rider unexpectedly, so the general leadership can change on any day in the mountains. But most mountain stages end with downhill finishes. Even when a rider doesn’t make it over the last peak in first place, he’s got a chance to catch up on the way down to the finish line.

But tomorrow’s finish line comes right at the end of a daunting climb. Whoever gets to the top first will win the stage. So Sunday was already likely to be a key stage in determining who will lead the pack into the final week of the race.

And now Garmin-Slipstream has stirred the hornet’s nest.

Lance Armstrong tried to impose his will on today’s stage, and Garmin frustrated his efforts. Lance has had trouble so far this season dominating any races. Maybe Garmin wanted him to get all het up and fire all his powder tomorrow, to try to get him to blow himself out before the rest of the week in the Alps. I doubt they thought that far forward. For the better part of a decade, trying to frustrate Lance Armstrong has been a losing gambit.

And Monday is a rest day, so there’s no reason tomorrow for any rider not to give it his all. Garmin may have punk’d themselves. Bob Roll, a former Tour rider turned commentator, forecasts that payback will be “swift and Old Testament-style.”

I’m looking forward to see how it plays out on the road.

(Tune in also at http://live.cyclingnews.com/?id=latest, for text updates and commentary, plus links to deeper background information on riders, teams, history, stage maps and elevation profiles, and so on.)

Thursday, July 09, 2009

If you have ever been curious about watching the Tour de France, Friday will be a great moment to see what it’s all about. You can watch free online at http://www.versus.com/tourdefrancelive (just click “Continue”), starting at 8 a.m. EDT. Why such a great day to watch?

The race is at the end of its first week. Opening gambits have been played by individual riders and teams, and Friday the real fun begins as the riders hit their first major mountains. The best riders in the world will duke it out mano a mano on the final climb to Andorra, more than 5,000 vertical feet of continuous uphill ride that gets steeper as it goes, with two “sprint” sections along the way.

By the end of the stage—an uphill finish, a treat for the best climbers—only a handful of riders will be left in the front, with the rest of the field still struggling to follow along behind. Even the best riders will have to pull their hardest to keep climbing, in a gripping battle of wills more than legs, fighting for a few seconds’ advantage. On a flat stage, generally all the riders finish almost at the same time. Little advantage (if any) is gained on the field. In the mountains, a bold rider can climb ahead of the pack and gain precious minutes—if nobody else can keep up.

Every mountain stage is an epic battle, but here’s why the toughest nuts are going to be trying particularly hard on Friday:

Lance Armstrong is hundredths of a second behind No. 1 rider Fabian Cancellara; everyone expects Cancellara to drop behind early in the mountains. He is a great rider on flat land; mountains are not his specialty.

Right behind Lance (19 seconds behind) is Alberto Contador, who won the Tour two years ago and wasn’t invited to race last year. This year he considered it his right to defend his earlier victory. Then seven-time winner Lance Armstrong came back and joined Contador’s team, and Contador’s spotlight was in danger. Will Contador try to beat Lance? Will they ride neck and neck? Will Lance’s 37-year-old legs be able to keep up?

Lance and Alberto ride for Team Astana, and right behind them in the overall are two other legendary team members, Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden, who have also both finished among the top three riders in previous Tours. You have to count back a minute or two to get to the rest of the top contenders for this year’s overall win: Australia’s Cadel Evans, Spain’s Carlos Sastre (who won last year, without Contador or Lance or Levi racing), the Schleck brothers from Luxembourg, and maybe a few others. Christian Vande Velde, born in Illinois, has proven his legs in the mountains, and he is in 8th place. All these riders will be trying their hardest to ride out ahead and gain back time they have already lost to the Astana boys.

And when any of the top contenders ride out in front of Lance or Alberto—or Andreas or Levi—the Astana team will be forced to respond. Will Lance and Alberto be so focused on beating each other that they’ll let the lead slip to riders from other teams? Will they work together to dominate this climb and cement their team’s advantage? No matter their strategy, how will their legs hold up?

The race so far has been a matter of positioning the best riders for the mountain stages. Every stage has something to watch, but not every stage is a critical turning point. Tomorrow’s stage will shake out the chaff from the top slots, bringing to the front the riders with the leanest legs. This early in the race (coming to the end of the first week of three), the game is still open and anyone can still pull ahead. But all the top riders know that they can’t afford to lose any time in Friday’s stage, and some of the very best are going to be mighty hungry to gain back an edge.

That should make Friday’s fight to the mountaintop finish a particularly great day to watch the Tour de France. Certainly the overall lead will change hands. But who gets it, and how, and where that leaves everyone else, make up an epic whose stanzas will be written on the asphalt climb to Andorra.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Three of us took off a bit before sundown to have a little dinner and enjoy some harbor sights and maybe catch a fireworks show we had heard rumors about.

The guy above declined to come with us. He was busy reviewing operations at the dock.

Mischa and Jenna

One of them cleverly brought coffee.

An old favorite bridge. We steamed out under it. This is near my home.

Ever wonder what happens to all that metal you recycle? At some point it probably ends up in a pile like this, waiting to be transported overseas.

For many satellite orbits, you can get the satellite into place with less rocket fuel if you launch near the equator. For this reason, Boeing and some other folks partnered up to form Sea Launch, which launches rockets from the Pacific Ocean. Most of the time it has worked fine. Sea Launch’s home port is in Long Beach.

The control ship is nearest to us in this picture. The floating launch platform is next to it. In the video linked above, you see the platform as it looks on duty, when it’s mostly submerged. (Believe it or not, damage to the floating platform in that incident was minimal.)

Our fire boat escort to the Queen Mary. Behind it, over the Palos Verdes Peninsula, you see what some people would call a blimp. It’s not a blimp in this case; it’s a dirigible. And it’s not just any dirigible, as it turns out: It’s a Zeppelin, made by the same folks who ran into a glitch in 1937 when landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey. That event made for some interesting album covers, but it set back the commercial development of passenger airships by a few decades.

Fortunately, today you can once again take a pleasure ride in one of these behemoths. This one is normally stationed at Moffett Field in Northern California, last home base of the airship Macon, which met its own untimely end in 1935, a couple of years after the loss of her sister ship, the Akron. (The Macon was christened by the wife of Mr. Moffett himself.)

This particular airship came to Southern California for the weekend, and after it finished checking out the sunset, it came back over us and hung around for the fireworks show.

The moon is illuminated here by the setting sun. Technically the sun isn’t burning; it’s undergoing a process of thermonuclear fusion, with plasma running all over and much turmoil. One way or another, it throws out a lot of lumens.